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Monday, December 30, 2013

When my children were very young we borrowed the Mozart's Magic Flute computer game from the library and I was very impressed. Players take young Mozart on a journey to restore the color to the land. Identifying the instruments in the orchestra by listening is only one of the challenging musical activities. Here is a sample of the game.

It was such a wonderful game I wanted to purchase it to introduce it to my youngest child who was too little to play before. Since it's so old I was worried about it working on my computer. Set of 3 Music Games, Windows Only CD-ROM

My husband was able to get one of the games to run, and it did require a little extra effort. He had to install an old version of macromedia player, copy the CD to the hard drive and disable the virus checker during installation. It worked. Unfortunately he couldn't get the other two to work.

My kids still love the game and so do I, but I would only recommend purchasing this game if you have a very old computer, as it has not been updated to run on new systems.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

A human body study would not be complete without covering the reproductive system. During the past year we began our human body unit study with cells and progressed through the body covering the digestive system, the nervous system, liver, spleen, circulatory system and so much more. Kids are naturally curious about reproduction and incorporating the topic as part of the human body study seemed natural.

Reproduction is a highly personal topic especially in regards to what we tell our kids. In our house we have been honest and answered all of the very detailed kid questions. Therefore, before beginning this lesson the kids had a good understanding of reproduction. In fact, the two oldest kids witnessed their sister's birth.

From our prior discussions the kids knew that daddies put babies into mommies bellies with their penis. When sperm go in they search for an egg inside the mommy. Mommies have three holes; one for urine, one for feces and one for babies. Daddies have two holes; one for feces and the other is for urine and sperm. Babies go in and out through the same hole. Daddies get to decide when babies go in, but mommies have to say it's alright.

All the kids knew was discussed mostly in the car over the course of several years and through many questions............ (I'm taking a deep breath.)

The reproductive system is the only human body system that takes a boy
and a girl to make it work. All the other systems are contained within
our bodies. I taught this lesson much like my numerous other human body lessons. We made a model using craft supplies and household items and talked about what the model represented and how the body worked.

First we made simple models of boy parts and girl parts.

Girl Parts
The red liquid (water with red food coloring) represented blood. The plastic bag was the uterus. Two yellow straws were stuck into the plastic bag near the top and represented the fallopian tubes and the pink straw at the bottom was taped into a hole in the bag and represented the vagina. There was also a bowl of tiny beads to represent the eggs (not pictured above, but can be seen below).

Boy Parts
The two glasses of yellow liquid (water and yellow food coloring) represented the testes. The syringe represented the penis.

The girls handled the girl parts and my son took care of the boy parts. The girls had a lot to do. We began with a uterus full of blood and then began counting. (1-28 to represent a 28 day cycle.)

As we counted from 1 to 5 the blood was drained from the uterus (menstruation).

We continued counting. At 14, a small bead (egg) was placed into one of the straws (fallopian tubes) which traveled to the plastic bag (uterus). Red water (blood) filled the uterus as we counted from 15 to 28.

No fertilization took place. We began counting again from 1 to 5 blood while blood and the egg drained from the uterus.

Up to this point my son did not have any tasks, but kept himself busy playing.

Finally we told him it was time. At 14 another egg traveled down the fallopian tube and he was able to add some yellow water (sperm) to the uterus.

I told the kids that if the water turned orange they would get a baby, because that meant that the sperm had found the egg.

So he put in yellow water several times and the girls wanted him to.

They got a baby and the girls wondered how it was going to fit through the straw. I told them that normally it stretches, but they would have to put a hole into the plastic bag (uterus) to get it out. We didn't talk about c-sections, but it would have been a good opportunity.

They got a baby bird?

This project turned out to be a very relaxed way to talk about an uncomfortable subject. As they get older we will begin to talk about STD's and other related topics, but I think this is definitely enough for now. The activity raised a few more questions, but it answered many more than it raised. My favorite quote came from my six year old daughter at the end; "I don't like the girl part. It's messy." If she only knew how insightful she was.

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading about our reproduction activity. I hope you enjoyed it and didn't find it too uncomfortable.

This is the last post in our human body unit, but there is much more science to come. Over the next few weeks I have some Astronomy posts planned and then will be moving onto Earth Science.

The frontalis muscle is in the forehead. She is raising her eyebrows to strengthen the frontalis.

Push-ups with hands forming a small triangle was my husband's idea for strengthening the tricep muscles. It was very challenging.

He's doing a bicep curl using the chair as weight.

I was surprised by how difficult it was for the kids to connect body movement to specific muscles. By the end I think they got the idea. They definitely learned the locations and scientific names of a few muscles in the body and had some fun doing it.

The main focus of the video was the science of Vesuvius. Today the lava chamber under the volcano far exceeds its footprint and it is still active. When it erupts, it will not be a good day for the city of Naples. It obviously shows the horror of the day so I would recommending previewing this video before showing it to children.

Then we played Roman Numeral Bingo. Please feel free to print the game for personal or classroom use.

First we went over a few basics of Roman Numerals.
I=1 V=5
X=10 L=50
C=100 D=500
M=1000

Roman Numerals are built with place value. Numbers 1-8 are built with the letters I and V. Tens values of 1-8 (10, 20, 30,....80) are built with the X and L. Hundreds values of 1-8 (100, 200, 300,...800) are built with the C and D. Thousands values are built with the M.

Nines are made from the letters in the first column; I, X, C and M. IX=9, XC=90, CM=900.

Looking at the letters that make up the place value digit, a smaller letter value preceding a larger letter value means subtract. For example; XL = 50-10 = 40. A larger letter value followed by a smaller letter value means add. For example; DCC=500+100+100 = 700.

The word ROMAN is printed across the top of the Bingo board.
The R column contains the values 1-9.
The O column contains the values 10-99.
The M column contains the values 100-999.
The A column contains the values 1000-4000.
The N column contains all numbers.

Reading the winning numbers back was an added challenge.

* I did not receive any compensation
for this recommendation. I'm just a homeschooling mom who has found many
products that I like. If you're interested in the products I recommend
on this blog I want to make it easy for you to find them. ** I am an Amazon associate and
receive a small portion of the sales on orders made after clicking in
from this site, which I promptly spend on homeschooling books and
supplies for my children.

Friday, December 20, 2013

This week Samantha at Stir the Wonder linked up several unique, Christmas themed, fine-motor skills development activities for little ones. I love the shoe box Christmas tree that is decorated by sticking pom-pom adorned toothpicks through the small holes.

What have you and your kids been up to? Please share your entertaining and educational activities for kids.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

The Knifty Kniter is a peg loom that makes knitting easier. The looms come in various sizes and shapes. We have used the large circular looms to create hats. Kids as young as five or six can create hats on these looms with a little guidance.

We used two strands of yarn held together as one to make the knitting go a little faster and create a thick hat.

First the yarn was tied onto a peg on the front of the loom. Then it was wrapped around each peg.

The yarn was wrapped around each peg a second time.

This special pointy tool was used to take the bottom loop off the peg by bringing it over the top loop. Fingers work almost as well as the tool. Then the yarn was wrapped around the pegs again and the process was repeated.

When the hat was about eight inches tall the yarn was threaded
through the remaining loops, pulled tight and then woven into the
underside of the hat to secure it and prevent unraveling.

Last
year my six year old created leg warmers using a smaller peg loom. The
smaller looms also create nice scarves. The scarves are tubes, but worn
folded flat into long rectangles.

* I did not receive any compensation
for this recommendation. I'm just a homeschooling mom who has found
many products that I like. If you're interested in the products I
recommend on this blog I want to make it easy for you to find them. ** I am an Amazon associate and
receive a small portion of the sales on orders made after clicking in
from this site, which I promptly spend on homeschooling books and
supplies for my children.

About Me

I am an American mother of three who spent six years living in Germany. Education has always been a primary focus for me. This blog is packed with fun educational activities for kids. Speed! is a skip-counting game I created in 2011 to help kids learn multiplication. In June 2012 my younger daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia, so that topic has quickly taken over a portion of this blog. You can reach me at
jmommymom @ gmail . com